Migration, Management
and Market Share: The Future
of the Cloud in 2018
David Linthicum
The number of bad predictions we see at this time of
year always takes me aback. Everyone in the cloud
space, including vendors, reporters, and pundits (like
me) seem compelled to make predictions for the next
year, and most of them end up being wrong.
Why? Look closely at credentials. Most have dogs in
the hunt. Or they are beholden to one cloud provider
or another, so the predictions seem to spin in a posi-
tive way toward those whom they shill for.
So, what’s different about my predictions? I’m inde-
pendent. It’s a requirement for cloud computing con-
sultants to provide independent and objective advice.
While you may not agree with my predictions, you
won’t be able to find any obvious bias.
34 | THE DOPPLER | FALL 2017
So, here are mine for 2018:
Public Cloud Market
There are, in essence, three major public cloud pro-
viders that are in direct competition: AWS, Google,
and Microsoft. So what happens to the public cloud
market in 2018?
In 2018, I predict that Microsoft will continue to gain
ground on AWS, in terms of market share. While AWS
won’t stop growing, and for good reason, Microsoft
will accelerate the growth of the market share they
already control. The bad news for Microsoft is that
the market may not live long enough for them to
catch up to AWS. However, Microsoft can still be
happy with their strong “second place” ranking.